Description
Planetary astronomer Dr. Michael T. Roman from Leicester University will provide insights in his recent and ongoing research which involved ESO’s VLT in Chile in the past and will possibly even benefit from the soon to be launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, now scheduled for 18 December).
Once beyond the known boundaries of the solar system, the Ice Giants—Uranus and Neptune—represent a distinct class of worlds but remain the least explored environments of our Solar System. Over the past decades, challenging observations and improved technology have begun to reveal how these similar but fundamentally different planets change in time. In this talk, we will review evidence of variability on Uranus and Neptune from observations in the visible and infrared. We will discuss how and why the weather changes on these distant worlds over days and decades, while showcasing recent observations from the European Southern Observatory. And we will look ahead to future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope and possible missions beyond.
